1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to the field of computer animation and, more specifically, to dynamic collision avoidance for crowd simulation using lane coordinates.
2. Description of the Related Art
Crowd simulation is the process of simulating a crowd having a large number of animated characters placed in a computer-generated crowd area. For the characters in the crowd to appear realistic, crowd simulators typically provide algorithms that attempt to simulate movements of the characters in a realistic manner. Such movements include the characters in the crowd traversing pre-defined paths. Crowd simulators, however, do not account for characters in a crowd colliding with one another when traversing paths. Thus, characters in a crowd simulation often collide with one another when traversing intersecting paths.
Collisions between characters negatively impact the realism of the crowd simulation because humans, in real life, self-correct their motion to avoid these types of collisions. Therefore, simulations generated by a crowd simulator that do not account for collisions between the different characters in the simulations appear unrealistic.
As the foregoing illustrates, what is needed in the art is a technique that enables collisions between moving objects in a crowd simulation to be avoided.